Shadows on the Wall of the Cave

So the French philosopher Alain Badiou is apparently writing a movie about Plato (via @jamespoulos). The script will be in English. But Badiou claims that he won’t include a single word that’s not in Plato’s dialogues. In addition to bringing a ripping yarn to the cinemas, TVs, and laptops of the world, Badiou thinks it would be subversive to disseminate the teachings of Plato, “the symbol of universal wisdom”, by means of the “propaganda machine of American life, the capital of capitalist corruption: Hollywood!”.

I can’t believe that Badiou is serious (I feel the same way about his philosophical writings). Nevertheless, I hope that he succeeds. The Platonic dialogues were often performed as dinnertime entertainment in the Hellenistic period. Although it might not please scholars, there’s historical precedent for a film.

But I have quibbles about Badiou’s dream cast, which would include Brad Pitt as Plato and Sean Connery as Socrates. For one thing, Plato doesn’t appear in any of the dialogues. So Pitt would presumably be limited to a silent role. He might have more opportunity to display his talents as Alcibiades.

More seriously, Sean Connery, is much too good looking to play a man whose bulging eyes and pug nose were the object of mockery to his contemporaries. How about Wallace Shawn? Or Paul Giamatti?

Apart from the stars, a film about Socrates would offer wonderful roles to character actors. Who would play the loyal Crito? The dim Euthyphron? The spirited Thrasymachus? Are there any figure from the dialogues you’d particularly like to see on screen? Personally, I’d love to see a cameo appearance by Aristophanes, who was the first to see the crowd-pleasing potential in all this nonsense about philosophy.

19 Responses to Shadows on the Wall of the Cave

All you really need is Socrates, a few straw dogs, and a sycophantic chorus. “Yes, Socrates!” “That’s right, Socrates!” “How clever, Socrates!” Reading Plato is like reading a transcript of the 17th Party Congress.

I think Troy, while a better film than widely thought, proved that Brad Pitt doesn’t need to be playing an ancient Greek.

How about Anthony Hopkins and Christian Bale as Socrates and Plato, respectively? Daniel Craig as Aristophanes (if he does the Symposium); maybe Alan Rickman for Euthyphro? Possibly Ewan McGregor as Crito? Beyond those, I’m not sure.

If I were a studio executive I would put the axe to this one. It will be a bomb, worse than Bob Guccione’s production of Caligula.

But let’s pretend I’m Harvey Weinstein.

Let’s pretend the film has been green lighted. If I were a Lynn Stalmaster to Alain Badiou’s choice of Jean Luc Godard to direct a Hollywood Greek philosophic opera that would be a horribly over-budgeted idea called “Plato’s Republic,” then why not call it “Plato’s Politeia?”–that would give it that mysterious cache that works at the box office for the educated audience.

Of course, we have an original text, i.e., Badiou’s “wonderful” Plato’s Republic in 16 Chapters to work with. Who would say it could fail.

Let’s get millions of dollars to make a crane shot going down to the Pireaus, but it must be realistic. As Godard said updating Bazin–”the camera shows truth 24 times a second.”

Let’s get a good suspenseful soundtrack, like the kind Brian De Palma gets from Pino Donaggio. He can play with the various Doric and Ionic musical modes to the Homeric allusions in a realistic but beautiful and creepy way.

So here’s the cast, a la Lynn Stalmaster, at this point–

Socrates–Toby Jones, he has the hypertrophic head that Nietzsche claimed was the physiological basis for Socrates’ questions.

Cephalus–I still go with Wilford Brimley. Nothing like quoting Euripides in a folksy manner.

Polemarchus–If you help friends and hurt enemies, and you are the son of Cephalus (if I remember correctly), then Zach Galifanakis if your man.

Thrasymachus–If not James Woods because he is too old, then another younger cocky bright guy who looks like a jerk is Edward Norton.

Glaucon–This one is hard, but I go for Ryan Gosling. He’s intelligent, good looking, and in no way settles for a “city of pigs.”

Adeimantus–Paul Rudd. He always reminds you of your bodily limitations.

Anyway, I say we shoot it live all night with natural lighting like Kubrick did in Barry Lyndon.

It might be of interest to note what Badiou’s works in fact consist of. The centerpieces of his prolific output are the two books, Being and Event, and Logics of Worlds, which seek to ground an entire system of knowledge, an onto-phenomenology so to speak, purely on the basis of the axioms of Set Theory and 1st-order logic. It is, by people who pay attention to these things, considered the most extraordinary attempt at a “total system” of philosophy since Kant’s Three Critiques and Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences.

So we could maybe do without the blithe dismissal based on obvious lack of knowledge of the man’s work, mightn’t we, Samuel? Thanx.

How about Xantippe? Her bad rep may just be legendary, and she seems to have been quite a bit younger that S. Maybe prettier too? Try Julia Roberts and see if she can get a Greek accent better than she got the Irish one in Michael Collins.